


Broken Shine The Stars

by LocketShoru



Category: Saint Seiya, 聖闘士星矢: 冥王神話 | Saint Seiya: The Lost Canvas
Genre: Bastardizaton Arc Speedrun, Gen, Hades Sympathetic, Hurt/Comfort, Not Athena Sympathic, Pisces Albafica's POV, Saint Seiya Week 2020, Whump, no beta we die like gold saints
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-03
Updated: 2020-08-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:54:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25698400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LocketShoru/pseuds/LocketShoru
Summary: [Day 2: Resentment, Betrayal, Reverse AU] Albafica's dead, and the Spectre in front of him reads off his life like a storybook. As it turns out, Spectres who spend the majority of their time in courtrooms enjoy arguing, a bit more than he'd like them to. Or maybe, it's just enough.
Relationships: Pisces Albafica & Balrog Luné, Pisces Albafica & Gemini Aspros
Comments: 19
Kudos: 26
Collections: SAINT SEIYA WEEK 2020





	Broken Shine The Stars

**Author's Note:**

> Current song: [Akatsuki Records' Lullaby for a Lost Child](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-l_LW5y36o). Which didn't fit as a title so we're going with Toby Daye again.  
> Aspros' death is mentioned, hence the tag. Lugonis is mentioned, so is Luco, Defteros, and Sage. Reverse AU only counts because Alba's speedrunning his bastardization arc. (Which is the opposite of a redemption arc.) But I'm having fun. Also, this should answer every "but Pale why is Athena evil?" question. :p

He listened in quiet, sickening horror as the platinum-haired man in front of him, behind the desk and up atop the dais, read out a rough outline of his entire life. Things he had forgotten. Things he wished that he had. How he’d felt during each moment, how it had shaped him into the warrior he’d become, as he lost it all to save what he cared about.

The more the man read, the more pointless it all felt. He’d given his life, but would it have stopped them? There were two more Judges, countless other Spectres. They’d want to burn it down just to prove how futile his efforts had been, and now Lady Athena was down a Gold Saint, ten left to save them all where there should have been twelve. And by sealing everything in roses… He may have only served to mire them all in a deathtrap that now, nobody could stop, nobody could save them from.

“He used his _Crimson Thorn_ technique to distract his opponent, knowing it would fail to penetrate his surplice, and while his opponent was focused on blocking, he used the _Bloody Rose_ that was in his teeth to penetrate his opponent’s chestplate, and collapsed. His opponent attempted to challenge the Aries Saint to a battle, and collapsed himself shortly afterward. Then, the accused woke briefly, lucid due to bloodloss and impending death, verified that his opponent was dead, noted in his dazed fervour the rosepetals, and ultimately, blood loss and internal bleeding stopped his heart.”

It had all been pointless. He kept his gaze to the mirror-bright polish of the marble floor, somehow black, flickering with the blue flame of the torches on either side of them. He was chained to the chair, yes, but it was all for show, a glorious display of having him imprisoned. He wasn’t going to run. They all knew that. There wasn’t any point in it. He was dead, and he’d never considered for a moment what happened after that. Humans were bright. They shone like stars and died, and then they were buried.

For someone who had trained his entire life to fight the warriors of the dead, he probably should have thought for five seconds what they were going to do to him now that he’d slaughtered their own, and could not defend himself from them. 

“Is that what happened, Pisces?” asked the soft voice of the man behind the desk. He looked up, forcing himself to meet his eye.

“Yes,” he answered. The man had a shimmering gorget and gloves visible under his robe: a surplice, he guessed. It wouldn’t make sense for anything but a Spectre to judge the dead. Perhaps this had been Minos’ duty, before he’d gone and killed him. “That is what happened.”

The man sighed, and raked a hand through his hair. “You have two options here, Pisces Saint, and I will allow you a bit of a choice between them. The first is to accept the punishment that awaits all Saints. I do not believe you would enjoy it, you do not seem the type. The second-”

Albafica cut him off. “I’m not telling you our strategy to win the Holy War.”

The man paused, and for a split second, Albafica could see the corner of his mouth twitch. “We already know that, but if you ever change your mind, it would be appreciated. I simply have a few questions. Out of curiosity, mind, not strategy.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Do I get to refuse to answer?”

“I suppose so, but there isn’t a point to doing so. It simply clarifies your case a little more.” The man leaned forward, tapping his index finger on his chin. “You’re an enigma, and you aren’t what I expected. The last Pisces Saint that came through here handled himself quite differently.”

Albafica tensed. Of course - Lugonis would have passed through here, sat in this very chair, stared the Spectre down with a thin, disapproving glare. He wouldn’t be sitting ramrod-straight at attention, arms pinned to his side by chains: no, Master Lugonis would have relaxed, treated the prisoner’s chair as his throne, ankle resting on his opposite knee, elbow on the armrest and chin propped up on his palm. He would have commentated his own life, sarcastic and strict, personally delighting in making this Spectre’s day difficult. All he had done so far was listen.

The man scratched the back of his neck, and looked back at him. “When you were seven, you chose to take part in the Red Bond because you didn’t want the man who became your father to be alone, correct?”

Wary, he nodded. “Correct.” The Spectre was getting at something, but he didn’t know what, and he didn’t think he was going to like it.

“Nine years later, he died, because your poison overcame his.”

He nodded again. “Yes, it did. I buried him that morning, and departed soon after for Sanctuary. He’d… he’d left me a note. He knew it was going to kill him.”

The Spectre had already mentioned as much when he’d read his life out, in that strange, rose-gilded book of his. “He did,” the Spectre confirmed. “I asked him about it, when he passed through here. You went to Sanctuary, intending on announcing yourself as his successor, and pledging yourself to Athena. Why?”

“Why?” He blinked. The answer was kind of obvious. “He was training me to be his successor, one way or another. I needed to do that.”

“Again, why?” The Spectre looked more confused. “You didn’t _have_ to become a Saint. You could have stayed in his garden and the house the two of you built in, with the Pisces Cloth. Or you could have left to seek your own fortune. But you didn’t - you went to Sanctuary, and took his place. He was dead. By all rights, there was nothing there for you anymore, but you did it anyway.”

He puzzled through his words for a moment, tried to see what was confusing him. “We are - we were, I suppose - in the service of Athena. We have - had - our poison in her service. It would be actively betraying her, to not heed her summons now that I had taken the place of one of her greatest.”

“Would that have been such a bad thing?”

“Yes!” He hadn’t meant to snap or yell, but he did both: the very idea of betraying Lady Athena was repulsive, and he couldn’t understand how the Spectre in front of him wouldn’t get that. He took a breath. “You wouldn’t betray Hades, it would be against everything you are to do so. I wouldn’t betray Athena, either. It’s the same thing.”

The Spectre snorted, a disdainful sound. “Please. I was born and raised in the service of Poseidon, and I did it because my family did it, and they told me it was the most honourable thing. But I wasn’t getting anything out of it. Serve him, and for what reward? So he’d nap for another three centuries and not drown us all? So my family wouldn’t throw me aside? I took what I knew and I found someone who’d pay me for it and my service. That ended up being Hades, and he doesn’t make me swim for my reward.”

“You are an incredibly selfish person, and you should feel bad,” Albafica deadpanned. The Spectre rolled his eyes.

“And what, then, does Athena do that’s worth killing your father for? What’s worth sacrificing all the experiences that should have belonged to your family?” He paused, and the Spectre continued, his soft violet eyes locked onto Albafica’s dark blue. “Your father had a twin brother. You only met him long enough to kill him, and wish you hadn’t needed to. Maybe you would’ve grown up knowing him, spending half your evenings at his home instead of your father’s, seeing the world and all humanity currently has to offer with both of them at your back. All the world could have been yours for the taken, and his too, and you gave it all up to serve Athena and fight her bloody battles. Why? What damn reward did you get out of it that made any of that _worth it_?”

He was silent, for a moment. He’d never heard it phrased that way. He had an answer, but explaining it was a different story. And now that he thought about it… He didn’t know much about Luco. He wished he did. Had seen the way he smiled and known him for Lugonis’ twin even if he’d been blind. How he’d cracked a joke about Lugonis’ inability to cook, how he suspected they’d worked together to make the recipes for the dinners he’d grown up eating. How he could see Lugonis’ style of gardening in each part of the island. Maybe he would have been able to see the things he wanted to, had experienced the world he’d died protecting, if they’d chosen different.

He closed his eyes, so he wouldn’t see his words hang silent in the air in front of him, and began. “Hades is… If he wins the Holy War, he’ll blanket the world in darkness. Humanity will die. Maybe all the animals and plants too, but he’ll black out the stars, and maybe all that will be left is darkness and ruin and sorrow. And maybe the Age of Myth will rise again, as someone manages to defeat him, and maybe that defeat would be a good thing. There are… some seven hundred million humans. Should they all be forced to die, to bring back the Age of Myth, if anyone manages to defeat him at all? Or is it better, to give eighty-eight warriors the opportunity to fight, knowing most of them will die, to stop the slaughter of those seven hundred million? We chose to fight, knowing we probably weren’t going to make it out. Humans will die as they will anyway, but they don’t deserve a senseless slaughter.” He opened his eyes, to the confused face of the Spectre before him. “We chose to roll the odds against death, so everyone else would have a _chance_.”

There was a noise of commotion to his left. He leaned over in his seat, trying to see into the darkness. One of the seven Spectre guards to that side had handed his spear to his neighbour, and was stalking forward.

The Spectre upon the dais glared. “You don’t interrupt a trial.”

“Get fucked, Balrog. He needs to know what they did to him.” 

The words hit him like a carriage at full speed, and the voice that spoke them, even more painful. And as the dark-blue-haired Spectre stalked forward into the relative light of the trial floor, he could almost hear his heart breaking with the click of the Gemini Surplice’s boots against the polished marble.

Gemini Aspros, blue hair streaked with black and eyes a vicious, mercurial silver, stood a few feet from him. In a Surplice. He’d known that the other had fallen, but sweet Athena, he didn’t think he would have gone this _far_. He’d heard what happened, Manigoldo all but jumping into his garden to tell him, abandoning his own temple in hopes he could give the others a little bit of a warning. Asmita had interfered, and by his own brother’s hand, Aspros’ cooling body lay against the floor. He’d attempted to kill Pope Sage, when Sagittarius Sisyphus had been chosen as successor instead of him. Even now, he didn’t know why.

Aspros looked him in the eye. “You did what you did and took that damn poison. You didn’t do it for Athena. She wasn’t on your mind when you did it. You knew as well as the rest of us that if you didn’t become his apprentice, Sage would take you away from him. If you didn’t give up everything else that could’ve been yours, he’d be alone. That was what your reward was. Your reward was saving him, and you were willing to pay everything for it. And he didn’t tell you that you were going to be the blade that killed him because he thought you’d do better of serving her than he would, and he paid everything he had to serve her, because he thought she’d save the world. He did it to save millions of people. You didn’t. You did it to save him, and it was because betraying _him_ , not doing what he had asked of you, was abhorrent. You followed the destiny Athena had because he would have wanted you to, not because you thought she was right. You just knew that he thought she was right, and if he thought that, then she had to be, because he wasn’t the type to lie to you if he could avoid it. Am I wrong?”

He stared at him, at the colleague-turned-enemy, someone he’d considered an ally if not a friend, right up until he’d snapped and died. He wondered what broke him. What had sliced him so deeply he’d woken up from the illusion. He wondered if Aspros had always been kind, and he hadn’t known it until now, when Aspros was, in his own fucked-up and twisted way, trying to save him.

“You’re correct,” and the words left his mouth to hang full in the air, sorrowful and true, and maybe they took the truth out of him and left him empty. He never would have thought about it this way. Never. But now that it had been laid out in front of him… He hadn’t done it in Athena’s name, not really. He’d done it in her name, because it was the only way to do it in Lugonis’. Had Thanatos come to him as his master lay dying, and offered him Luco’s choice - his father safe and sound, for his own hands into a Surplice - he would have done it. It had been one of his last words to his uncle. He hadn’t blamed him, and he wasn’t angry, and he’d told him so. That he wasn’t cruel for trying to save what he cared about, any more than Lugonis wasn’t cruel for accepting his death to save the world.

Athena had made martyrs of them all, and they’d all justified it. He wondered what had caused Aspros to stop.

“Why?” were his next words, aimed at Aspros. “Why did you try to kill Sage? What good would it have done?”

Aspros’ laughter was sudden, and brief, and brutal; like Excalibur forged from sorrow. “He said my twin brother, the love of my life who I steer my stars by, was evil. He said he was born under an evil star, that he needed to be muzzled and kept like a dog, so he wouldn’t betray us. But stars don’t move that fast. If Defteros was born under an evil star, so was I. I got all the spotlight, all the love, all the praise I wanted. He got punished, and punished, and he didn’t deserve it. He’s a sweetheart. He kept carrying baby bunnies into the temple, trying to take care of them. Defteros couldn’t turn evil no matter what they did. But he still got punished for existing. I was going to become Pope, right? If I took Sage’s place, I could wipe all those rules away. I could make it so he would never have to fear again. We couldn’t run. We’d been in Sanctuary all our lives. Deserters deserve death, after all.”

He laughed again, and Albafica wondered how he could, before realizing he was only laughing so he didn’t start crying. He laughed like a Spectre. Maybe they were all laughing, refusing to admit how much they were hurting. He wondered if they could have been saved, and not slaughtered.

He wondered who had put those hollowed, wild, hallowed shadows in Minos’ eyes, and how badly he had been broken before he had been willing to follow Hades.

He didn’t think there was any saving them, now.

“And why’s that? If you don’t want to die for her, then you shouldn’t have to. But she took us as babies and kept us here, and we weren’t _asked_. We weren’t given a choice on whether or not we wanted to die for her!” Aspros took a step forward, towards him. “And you weren’t asked, either! If you’d been offered your father’s life but only if you both left her service for good, you would have done it. You did it for him. Sage wanted Sisyphus, and he only did that because he knew I was going to make it stop. I was going to give people the chance to leave if they found a successor. I didn’t want Sainthood to be a death sentence! Defteros deserved better. You deserved better. And she’s happy sacrificing and slaughtering us all like chess pieces, and for what?”

Aspros spun on his heel and jabbed a finger at the Spectre. “Balrog. What happens if Hades wins? Tell him. Tell him the truth. Athena lied to us all to keep us in her service. Tell him what she won’t!”

The Spectre sighed, and tugged his robe up over his head. He tossed it over the back of his chair, and stepped around the desk on the dais. He wasn’t wearing pauldrons, but he did have a pair of batlike wings, and a coiled whip at his hip, easy to the hand. “I am Celestial Clarity Star Balrog Luné, from Griffon. Luné will do just fine. This is the fifteenth Holy War. We have been doing this _stupid_ dance with Athena for over three thousand years. Every quarter-millennium, we cast our sacrifices to keep the Meikai functional, and she happily sees us slaughtered for doing what every Underworld must. We play the lesser villain in the piece, to hold our torches in the dark, to be the last lighthouse in the journey of life. We hold back the horrors we’ve imprisoned in Tartarus, so humanity needs not remember them. We fight them, so the world doesn’t have to.”

His voice was soft, and Albafica might have missed the note of sorrow if he wasn’t listening so closely. “If she managed to destroy us completely, the Titans and monsters we’ve imprisoned would wake up. And they would be free. Humanity would be slaughtered, unprepared and unknowing of what they’re facing. She complains because every now and then we have to slaughter a few villages to restore the Meikai’s power, so we can keep those horrors contained. In order to kill a monster, you still have to kill what lives and breathes.”

“Then why are you angry at Athena for it?” he demanded. “You kill people to save the world. But when it’s her own warriors who mostly saw it coming, that’s not okay anymore? You don’t exactly ask them if they’re all right with being martyrs!”

“But we don’t act like we’re blameless in it, either.” Luné said, softly. “The Meikai makes lesser monsters of us all. Me, Aspros, your uncle, you. We don’t tell everyone we’re perfect and honourable and don’t do anything wrong. When we kill, we don’t pretend that it doesn’t make us monsters. When she kills, either they deserved it, or they asked to die for her, and isn’t she so perfect.”

He looked away. He couldn’t argue with Luné’s logic, but something seemed wrong about it, though something was definitely wrong with the way Aspros was watching Luné, with the way he could see his hands shake. 

“Albafica, look at us,” Aspros said, softly enough. He forced himself to listen, to raise his chin, and he didn’t understand the look in those silver eyes, and didn’t want to know what Aspros and Luné saw in his. “You could have had your roses without the Red Bond. It’s only used for your _Crimson Thorn_ , and you could’ve done without it. You were already immune. All the Red Bond served was to make sure you could never leave her. She made you into a living weapon, and had you kill everything she couldn’t cut you off from, so you could only follow her. That’s why Sage had Defteros hurt. That’s why he did it. It was the only way to keep me in line. We would have overthrown him, if we’d both had nothing to fear from him. They did what they did because it kept them in control. Hades won’t destroy the world. They told you that so you’d agree with them and side with them willingly, not because it was true. Hades wants her to stop, so the world can see true peace for the first time in over three thousand years. She attacked him, not the other way around. That’s why she needs to be stopped. That’s why we have to stop her.”

He was silent. He wondered what Lugonis would have said, to all of this. He closed his eyes, took a breath, attempted to steady himself. He knew what they were asking of him, now. They wanted his help, because he had borne those wounds. Because he knew better than anyone but Aspros, what it was like for Athena to hurt him, and tell him it was all right. Somehow, Aspros had pulled the guilt of killing his father out of him, shifting it to something else. He was right. They hadn’t needed the Red Bond - every eligible Pisces was already immune. She’d done it to turn them into living weapons. She hadn’t needed to be so cruel, and yet, she had been.

“I want to see my father,” were the words that came out of him. “I want to see him, I know you have him, if he passed through this trial. And… You brought Aspros back. I want my father back.” He looked up again, meeting Luné’s eyes, meeting Aspros’. He could almost see the golden joy in them, understood it as well as the fire beginning to burn violet-black in his chest for what it was: Aspros, in all his sorrow, who had failed to saved what mattered most, at least had saved him. “Give him back to me, and I’ll do it. I’ll help you stop her. And we’ll make sure nobody has to suffer what we did ever again.”

Aspros laughed, and it was hope like a knife, as he stepped forward to undo the chains on his arms. Luné folded his arms, a smug half-smile on his face. “He’s already as close to alive as we can get without actual reason to resurrect him. He’d be in the healer’s wing now, with your uncle. Spectres don’t die as much as Saints want us to, Luco’s fine.”

Albafica rose from his spot and Aspros withdrew, carefully keeping the required distance. It occurred to him vaguely that he didn’t need to, being dead and all, but he appreciated it. Anything closer would bother him. “I’m going to assume Minos is fine then, too,” he muttered, almost resigned.

“Yeah, once he puts himself back together,” Aspros confirmed, with a dip of his head. “Master Alone’ll yell at him for fucking up, but he’ll be fine. But if you punch him a few more times, he’ll probably agree to not destroy Rodorio now that you’re on board. So it wasn’t _completely_ pointless, if that helps at all.”

Albafica rolled his eyes. “No, still pointless,” he answered. “But maybe I’ll decide differently later. Take me to my father.”

“Gladly,” Luné said, and then he turned to the rest of the guards around the room. “Court’s adjourned. Go take your lunch breaks and be back for one.”

The guards vanished, and Albafica blinked. Learning how to teleport like that wouldn’t be too bad. But Luné was leaving, and Aspros was beckoning him to follow.

He wondered, now, if there was any saving his ex-colleagues and friends in Sanctuary. He was beginning to think that maybe, there was.


End file.
